Sprint’s poorly named and even worse-advertised “Framily” discount plan is no more, as of later this week.

Is the Hamster Dad gone too? Most likely.

According to an account in the Kansas City Star, Sprint’s hometown paper, recently named CEO Marcelo Claure announced Monday that the Framily plan is no more. Instead, Sprint will offer a Sprint Family Share Pack, in which the main selling point is double the data of Sprint’s rivals at similar prices.

While the “Framily” package will no longer be offered, existing discounts will be honored.

Following the announcement, Claure led Sprint executives in the Ice Bucket Challenge:

Since its launch this past spring, the Framily pricing scheme was advertised with a truly bizarre television campaign, featuring a “family” in which the dad was a hamster voiced by Andrew “Dice” Clay, the mom was Judy Greer, and there’s a goth-like kid who thinks the hamster is his dad even though he isn’t. Here’s how I described the ads when they first launched in April:

According to an Ad Age story about the campaign, when Softbank took over ownership of Sprint last year, Softbank’s CEO “slammed his fists on a table and demanded that the company’s ad agencies be fired.” The problem with the previous ads, apparently, was the distinct lack of Jersey-accented hamster dads, as the new campaign is a retread of a previous one that ran, for Softbank, in Japan, where it has “had some success.”

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Bea Katsu

Stop wasting money on wasteful ads and take care of existing customers. Not sure of the numbers but I’m sure it cost more to get a new customer into Sprint service than to lose existing customers?
Build up your network and customers will come to Sprint.
A very disappointed shareholder in the original Sprint company